The attempt to force the resignation of Congressman Anthony Weiner is one of the most self-defeating, absurd acts Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats have yet attempted. Do they really care to loose one more Congressional vote over this tempest in an I-Pod? I am also amused the Republicans have the spheres to complain, considering their moral record.

The man has done nothing illegal or even all that inappropriate, according to the loose standards that prevail on the Internet these days. It seems the recipients of his sexting were legal and not even all that offended. It might be argued that Weiner was guilty of silliness and at most a temporary lapse of personal judgment. If a lack of silliness and an absence of lapses in judgment were required for Congressional tenure, we would have some pretty empty chambers.

We live in a society that ferociously guards its hypocrisy at all costs. Alleged cross-dresser, J. Edgar maintained his lifelong status as head of the FBI largely on the basis of the embarrassing details he was able to amass on virtually every important member of the US government.

To my mind, it is not the out of control sexuality that powerful men are heir to that is so damning, it is the hypocrisy that forces them to keep the facts from the public. Why do we all prefer to look the other way when confronted by Martin Luther King’s consorting with prostitutes (and not the way Jesus would have done), or JFK’s and RFK’s gambols with the luscious Ms. Monroe? They were both married at the time—not that degrading and humiliating spouses ever bothered a Kennedy male.

Our Christian inspired phobia of sex for pleasure not procreation has far greater consequences than an obsession with the Internet display of the sexual shortcomings of an otherwise effective and hardworking Congressman. Today I watched a parade of starving African children asking me for food on Christian television.

I was tempted to call their pledge line and offer to give them my hundred dollars if they would promise to distribute condoms and family planning information to the mothers (and especially the fathers) of these suffering little ones. I didn’t bother to waste my time because I knew what their answer would be.